In 2010 I studied at TAFE NSW, the port macquarie campus, I was 22 years old. The year began with one student commenting constantly that ‘he is a man and I am a woman’ so he could ‘have me’. I quickly explained my sexuality to him and thought that was that. A few months went by and he started harassing me shockingly, yelling “You are a sin against god.” across the science lab at me while the teacher was in the room. She somehow seemed to miss these comments.
He would follow me to the carpark asking me to dinner and always offering to help, trying to get me to come over to his house. It got worse as he made comments like, “so that’s where you live” and “Is your little sister as hot as you?” and at one point he cornered me in the carpark and pulled out live ammunition, saying he had the gun in the glovebox of his car, his car was parked 3 spaces away from mine. I felt threatened, he was physically bigger and constantly spoke of how many people he had killed when he served in the armed forces.
When he was angry he punched objects and made dents so everyone could see, he threw tables and chairs when the teachers were not around and other students just ignored him, when searching for witnesses, nobody spoke up, I was all alone.
At my breaking point with the only advice given by my mother to “Ignore him”, I listened to my partner instead and filed the complaint. When I did, they ignored the harassment and focused on the live ammunition he had brought onto the campus. The police took him from class and searched his car and he was kicked out for 2 weeks but upon returning, the barrage of hateful comments returned with him.
By this time I had befriended members of his group and found out he had been harassing other students and they didn’t like him anyway. As a group we ignored everything he said, gave no sympathy and did not invite him when we went on trips together, we openly excluded him because of his behaviour.
By the end of the year I found out he had moved on to another girl and is stalking/harassing her. He hasn’t learnt and is still in the area.
I’m forever watching out when I hang with my little sister, I’ve changed my look in the hopes he won’t recognise me at a glance. I don’t want him to know what she looks like just in case he starts harassing her.

If you believe in a person’s right to chose their sexuality without the threat of violence and are tired of “just ignoring” creeps like this, please help us by donating now.

I was grabbing takeout with my boyfriend and decided to wait outside the cramped store and get some air. I had just sat down on a bench when an old man approached, staring at me the whole time. I assumed he would lumber past, but he changed his direction at the last minute to stand right in front of me and asked “Are you alone?” I surprised the creep and myself with a strong NO and walked quickly towards a group of people until he passed.

What upset me most was that I could not feel safe at 7 p.m. on a busy street simply because I am female and by myself. The creep’s question captured perfectly what feels threatening about being harassed on the street, the feeling that there’s no one there to help. THANK YOU, Hollaback, for your work to empower girls to stick up for themselves and for each other!

Early this spring, I was running with other members of my high school girls track team. We were waiting for our coach, and we decided to stretch in an empty driveway along the street. Suddenly, one of us noticed a man in another driveway nearby, holding up a cell phone towards us and apparently taking a picture of us with it. A similar incident happened another day, when a man in a car photographed us as we were running. Both perpetrators left immediately after the incidents.
A few months after both of those incidents, I was running with a few other girls around the downtown area of our town. As we were standing at a corner and waiting for the light to change so we could cross, a man happened to walk towards us along the sidewalk. He appeared to be in his 40s or 50s, had apparently not shaved in a few days, and was wearing dark sunglasses that hid his face. As he passed us, he appeared to be looking at our legs, and we did not realize until he was past us that he had said ‘beautiful’ as he walked by us, quietly. This shocked all of us, and we were not sure it had happened until we looked at each others’ faces and knew all of us had heard it. He walked away as if he hadn’t just harassed us, and we pretended the same for the rest of our run.
We have also been yelled at by kids our age or younger. Once kids in a restaurant we ran past yelled “work those thighs!” repeatedly at us, and both the first time we ran past and as we ran back the same way. A few times, boys who were still in middle school yelled at us, talked about us, or even briefly tried to block or follow us as we were running.
Female athletes have the right to exercise in public (even in short running shorts) without being harassed and objectified! The fact that we happen to be wearing shorts does not remove our right to exercise, and our right to be treated like human beings, not pieces of meat. We did not react to these incidents and call out the perpetrators, and just put up with it, even though maybe we should have done something. This is a way that society treats female bodies as things to be looked at, while male bodies belong to those who inhabit them and are for their own use. (Often shirtless) male runners never worry about things like this; it is immediately accepted that they are not showing off their bodies, so that they can be objectified, but instead that they are running to become faster, and that their small amount of clothing is nothing more than a necessity for running in hot weather.

Last weekend led me to a family reunion halfway across the country. Travel can feel un-grounding for me, and so, with yoga mat in tow I prepared to carry deep breaths cross-country via plane.
The slow spring sunshine finally pulled me outside to the lawn to stretch and practice on the second day of the trip. I felt grateful for the fresh air, warm grass and sun. I had convinced my cousin, a “yoga-virgin” to join me in practice. With each breath the sun came out further and I felt my body finding a new sense of grounding and expansion amidst the busyness of a family reunited.
Cars had been driving past our lawn-turned-yoga-studio throughout our practice and so the sound of engines provided more of a consistent sound track than an annoyance. There was one car, however, that stood out from the rest. From the front seats of the indistinguishable black sedan peered two men, presumably college students from the local state university.
First I returned their gaze, becoming aware of their eyes as I melted forward into a seated forward bend. I quickly regretted my decision to look to my right when my eyes were met by the abrasive sounds of catcalls hollering out into the stalled traffic.
I glanced to my right to make sure I was getting this image right. Were these guys for real?
As if looking for some sort of understanding I stifled a groan, turning to my cousin for validation in my disgust. I could feel the frustration bumbling up inside of me. I felt shocked and conflicted. Taking a deep breath in and out I reflected in my forward fold. My practice is about compassion and patience, I reminded myself and yet in the midst of it I had the urge to yell back, to stick up for myself, and reassure these catcalling men that blatant objectification of women is never OK.
Rather than yell back, I breathed another dirgha (three-part yogic) breath and after a second catcall, the light changed and the car pulled forward into the intersection. I felt myself rolling my decision to remain silent over and over again in my mind. This time I chose understanding, I told myself.
My cousin didn’t understand, he had never witnessed or been victim to a similar instance. I wish I could say that this sort of act is an anomaly but unfortunately, it isn’t. Earlier that week my sister had been catcalled and photographed while biking by a passing group of construction workers in their truck—not cool.
I am not trying to suggest that only men are catcalling—I have definitely witnessed women falling guilty of the same act. Nor am I suggesting that only women are victims to the calls or that all guys catcall. But, I am saying that with each utterance of a catcall, hurt is felt. Whether you think we can hear your call or not, take a second and realize what you’re doing by yelling out.
Sure you may think I look pretty awesome in my forward fold but that’s not the point. Please resist the urge to holler and instead send out some love. Yogis and bicyclists alike much appreciate the respect.

Once I found Hollaback, I started thinking of my experiences and found quite a few. There was one that I didn’t even see as harassment but now I see it has always stayed with me in the most negative of ways. This was very long ago but I feel this is the perfect way to talk about it. I was about 10 years old and was sent to a nearby store to get something needed to cook. As I walked, this guy on a bike stopped me and asked if I knew where a certain street was, I said “No, sorry” and continued on. He did this about 4 more times until I reached the store. Once I got out I took a different route home because of the fear he might catch up with me again–I felt very uncomfortable. Once I was pretty close to my house I thought I was free but he called out once again and said “Hey, look at this…” I looked toward him and realized he was flashing me—I couldn’t move, I felt horrible and though he did not approach me further I felt dirty. I finally got home and didn’t even know what to do–I knew something was wrong. I hated how he made me feel and now I hate that he specifically targeted me and went out of his way to make me feel that way. It has been 10 years since it happened but I still feel glad I found somewhere safe to say, “FUCK YOU!!…Hollaback.

Once I found Hollaback, I started thinking of my experiences and found quite a few. There was one that I didn’t even see as harassment but now I see it has always stayed with me in the most negative of ways. This was very long ago but I feel this is the perfect way to talk about it. I was about 10 years old and was sent to a nearby store to get something needed to cook. As I walked, this guy on a bike stopped me and asked if I knew where a certain street was, I said “No, sorry” and continued on. He did this about 4 more times until I reached the store. Once I got out I took a different route home because of the fear he might catch up with me again–I felt very uncomfortable. Once I was pretty close to my house I thought I was free but he called out once again and said “Hey, look at this…” I looked toward him and realized he was flashing me—I couldn’t move, I felt horrible and though he did not approach me further I felt dirty. I finally got home and didn’t even know what to do–I knew something was wrong. I hated how he made me feel and now I hate that he specifically targeted me and went out of his way to make me feel that way. It has been 10 years since it happened but I still feel glad I found somewhere safe to say, “fuck you!”

This incident happened when I was about 12 years old (I am 20 now) and I was in a park with a friend. We had spent the entire day at the pool and we were laying on the playground asphalt sunbathing and waiting for my mom to come pick us up (the park was right next to the pool). We definitely weren’t alone in the park since there were mothers and children all around us, houses across the street and lifeguards at the pool next door. All of a sudden, a man with very short shorts came up to the park and leaned up against the trash can with his leg pushed up against the can (his package was very obviously hanging out of his tiny shorts). I saw what was going on but I didn’t really understand it, so I ignored it. The mothers automatically caught on and left, without saying anything to my friend and I. All of a sudden we were in the park by ourselves, with the man. He then walked down to a park bench in a shaded area. I looked over at him and he had his entire penis out of his shorts and he was aggressively masturbating while looking directly at us. Being 12 years old and very naive, I was totally confused and didn’t know what to do until my friend saw what was going on and grabbed my arm and ran with me to the entrance of the pool. Thankfully my mom arrived as we were walking up to the entrance and being the fierce mama-bear she is, searched the park for him, screaming for him, but couldn’t find him. We called the police and made a report and they came to my house with mugshots, hoping to catch the guy (apparently he’s been caught doing this before) but they never did catch him. The really sad part is that this happened in a very wealthy and nice part of town where there were plenty of people around. I also don’t understand why those mothers did not warn my friend and I. Now that I look back on it, I wasn’t scared when it was going on.. just confused. I didn’t understand why a man would want to do something like that to little girls and I was never taught to look out for things like that.. especially at the playground. Now that I am adult, I am always on the look out but it terrifies me to think that there are young girls, and boys, who are just as naive as what I was.

Until street harassment and sexual violence ends, we need to have each other’s backs. To make sure Tara’s story never happens again and to build a world where everyone can sit in a park safely, donate today.

I was riding the crowded T home and I felt something poking into my ass. At first I thought nothing of it and assumed it was someone’s bag, since that tends to happen a lot on the rush hour trains. I decided to turn around, though, and saw a man standing behind me with his thumb in his pocket and his fingers bent into a fist and realized that THAT was what was touching me. That his fist was pressing into me. I moved away as much as I could (in this case, a few inches), wondered if it was an accident or not but realized it probably wasn’t. At Copley, when half the train emptied, I moved to the other side and he ended up following me there. I saw him positioned directly behind another girl, looked up at him and stared him down for at least five seconds, and he didn’t break eye contact. It was disgusting and a complete display of domination. He knew I knew what he had done to me and was trying to do to her as well. At that point I somewhat loudly told the girl he was preying on, “You might want to move forward a few inches” and glanced back at him. I hope she got the message, because at that point my stop had come and I bolted home. Revolting.

For the majority of my life when people made cat calls or honked at me on the street I would just glare back enraged but not saying a word. Well that part of my life is over.

At least three times now in Toronto when someone feels the need to tell me something such as this fine fellow “which one of you wants to take a ride on me first” I address it head on. Astonishingly once I begin to ask them what they just said to me and ask whether or not they’ve heard of a thing called sexual harassment (usually causing a scene on the busy streets or in the mall) they tend to back away even apologizing. Not that sincere, but still gets the job done.

A couple of months ago this man was following two girls around my age down the street and kept telling them they were beautiful and asking for their numbers. They were clearly uncomfortable but were trying to ignore him (to no avail) so finally I spoke up and told him, not so kindly to back off. Of course this lead to him swearing at me and asking me if I realized he wasn’t talking to me. But no, it didn’t end there, two other men on the street that didn’t even know this guy also started to chime in and yell at me, it was a little too much to handle so I just walked down the side street and away from them. But hey, at least those two girls got to walk in peace.

Tomorrow is my birthday but I’m working all day and I was off today so my boyfriend took me out all day long for some birthday celebration awesomeness. At one point we ended up at Barnes and Nobel just relaxing and reading and checking things out. It was very nice, until I sat down to leaf through a magazine and got verbally intruded upon by some guy who happened to be sitting in the chair next to me.

I had been wandering around the store for about 20min looking for new books that I might like when I decided to go see what my partner was doing. I went downstairs and found him sitting in an armchair that was part of a set of four (two next to each other and two opposite those so they were facing each other). I came up behind him, gave him a kiss, hugged him, spoke with him a bit as all the other chairs were taken and was about to walk off and find myself a place to sit and peruse a copy of Wired when the chair opposite him opened up so I sat there.

Immediately upon sitting down the man occupying the chair to my right oogled me a bit and said “I really like your boots” (though he said it while eyeing me up and down and was staring intently at other parts of my body when he mentioned the boots which made me pretty uncomfortable). Hoping that seemingly innocuous statement would be the end of it I sat down. After a few moments he tried to start a conversation with me about the book he was reading. I “politely” ignored him – which is to say that I smiled, nodded, did not answer verbally and went back to my magazine. A few minutes after that he tried again, this time I actually verbalized a one word response and turned away from him again. Finally he tried a third time at which point my boyfriend got up out of his chair, walked toward me with his hand out, said to the strange man “We’re done here” and then said to me “Come on, let’s go.” The strange man said “Oh come on, you’re not leaving are you?” and that was pretty much it.

The whole exchange, from beginning to end, made me extremely uncomfortable. To begin with I don’t appreciate being sexually objectified ever, and especially not by random strangers. Additionally, I was not interested in interacting with anyone whilst at B&N. This was my day to celebrate my birth with my boyfriend in my own way. I didn’t want to have a conversation with this stranger, I wanted to leaf through magazines and books all by myself in a comfy chair but since this man decided he wanted to interact with me I was forced into an exchange that I did not want to be a part of. But after it was all over and I thought about it my biggest issue with the exchange was that I didn’t stand up for myself. I smiled and nodded and sent subtle, non-verbal signals to this man touting my disinterest in him and the fact that I was seriously uncomfortable and displeased with his attentions. I did not, however, actually say that I wanted him to leave me alone. I don’t believe that I am guilty of encouraging him because I don’t think I did. I shouldn’t have had to put up with that shit in the first place and the fact that he felt entitled to invade my space and my day just because he (apparently) thought I was attractive is the main problem here. But the secondary issue is that as a woman dealing with a strange man I was actually afraid to stand up for myself and tell him to leave me alone.

I spent some time thinking after we left B&N and I wondered why I had done nothing and just allowed this stranger to repeatedly accost me while my partner was able to step in without issue. The fact is that I was scared, as I am any time a strange man approaches me. I fear being assaulted, attacked, I fear that if I act out in any way that these men don’t appreciate they will react with anger and become in some way violent. I fear this because it has actually happened to me before (numerous times). I have said no to requests for my phone number or even to people trying to start up a conversation and I have had men yell and scream and get physically violent in the face of my completely reasonable rejection. Having had that happen to me in the past I choose to now err on the side of caution and simply go along with it when strange men approach me until I can safely extricate myself from the situation.

This right here is one of the many insidious side effects of rape culture – I have been literally terrorized into compliance. I will admit here and now that I have actually verbally and physically consented to sex that I did not want to have because I was afraid of the consequences if I said no. And variations on the scene in the bookstore have happened to me more times than I can count.

So men everywhere – if you want women to not fear you then don’t intrude upon them, upon their personal space and their lives, unless they invite you in and if they decline your attempt at contact don’t respond with anger, don’t respond with violence and accept that this person simply isn’t interested in interacting with you the way you want to. I don’t take it as a compliment when you “compliment” me because I know that those words come with strings and expectations attached to them. I don’t appreciate it, it doesn’t pad my ego and it’s not a boost for my self-esteem. There is literally nothing positive about being accosted by a random stranger regardless of what his intentions are.

People are not obligated to give you what you want just because you want it, instead you are obligated to respect their personal space, their personal wants and their personal rights.